Heres a few finished shots of the Alpine XM HU. Sounds great!

 

Another...

 

Barely visable antenna...

 

is that the 9820XM? if so, I have the same one in mine. haven't listened to fm in weeks...hehe

 

Good eye, yes it is


By the way, whats FM?

 

Another place to install it would be up in the front dash like this:


(GPS Antenna)

I am pretty sure there are spots on both the right and left side.
It results in a VERY stealthy install (zero visibility).

Pv

 

You could also just pop off the plastic cover on the strut (right where you have the antenna now) and put it under there. It'll work just as well and then you won't see it at all.

 

Hmm sounds like a good idea, thanks Doc! The plastic shouldnt mess with it huh? Because thats the only part of the whole antenna thats visable, the wires were hidden real nice.

 

Nope, it'll see through the plastic. As long as there is no metal covering it. Look at the in-dash pics posted above. In fact, the OEM GPS nav antenna for the Z is mounted under the plastic of the dash behind the triple gauge pod.

My XM antenna is the older bigger one and is in the exact same place as yours. I'd hide mine too but it's too big!

 

i had the installer put the antenna on the dash, but reception was really bad, so they put it on top of the car right in front of the spray nozzle for the rear window. doesn't look as bad as i thought it would since it is so small.

 

My reception's pretty good all around with where I have it located, but I do lose signal on certain highways (LIE Eastbound) and when going under tunnels and stuff (but not on the GWB for some reason?).

 

I've got my Sirius antennae mounted on the dash, right in the center.....when you look in the car its barely noticeable and is a good location IMHO...reception is excellent, except under bridges as well (lso on LI)....now I still need to replace my signal wire (only have mono XM right now )

 

I heard XM only broadcasts in mono, is that why you got sirius? I'm getting ready to add sat radio to my alpine head unit and not sure which one i'd be happier with.

 

HUH? I seriously doubt that. I don't think anyone broadcasts in mono anymore.

 

That's what a local audio "specialist" told me when i was browsing his shop. Told me that in XM's haste to be the first sat radio on the market they didn't take the necessary steps to broadcast in stereo. Sounds fishy to me too.

 

From the XM website:

"The Best Sound Quality in Satellite Radio
In a side-by-side evaluation of XM and its competitor, Sound & Vision® magazine concluded that XM has the best digital-quality sound in satellite radio. Only XM combines aacPlus by Coding Technologies with Neural Audio optimization to achieve digital-quality sound remarkably close to Compact Disc."

It doesn't say anything about stereo or mono but again, I don't know if even AM still broadcasts in mono anymore.

 

That is totally incorrect.

XM and SIRI both broadcast in stereo. In fact, both services are capable of encoding in Dolby 5.1. However, most raw music sources are not in Dolby 5.1 except for movie sound tracks, and most auto receivers cannot decode 5.1.

I currently have an XM Commander and love it.

Here is a picture of what I did for my antenna: